Comprehensive DescriptionRead full entry
Description of DebaryaDebarya is a filamentous green alga. AlgaBase describes it as follows. Thalli unbranched, forming extensive skeins of intertwining uniseriate filaments. Cells cylindrical 6-30 ÃÂµm in diameter, several times as long; cell wall two-layered with inner cellulose, outer mucilage layer; endwalls plane; no flagellated stages. Cells uninucleate; chloroplasts axile; flat ribbonlike or platelike; one or two per cell; pyrenoids in row or scattered. Asexual reproduction by fragmentation, akinetes, parthenospores, and aplanospores. Life cycle haplobiontic, meiosis zygotic. Sexual reproduction by scalriform conjugation; gametes isogamous, fuse within conjugation tube. Zygospores distinctly tricarinate with three keels, or sharp edges. Filaments usually found as free-floating masses. All species rare, but collected from Eruope, Asia, North America, and New Zealand. Earliest fossil zygospores reported from Permian Period (250 million years b.p.); in contrast to modern distribution, fossil keeled spores quite common in sediments where Zygnemataceae found, especially in cold or cool climates in high-mountain treeless plains (paramos) of Colombian Andes; used as marker for clean, oxygen-rich, shallow stagnant, mesotrophic water in habitats subject to seasonal warming. Originally D. glyptosperma described as a species of Mougeotia; Debarya may be related to latter.